


Coping

by wispmother



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Drabble, Emotional Baggage, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Game Spoilers, Original Character(s), brain puke, character backstory spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-28
Updated: 2016-03-28
Packaged: 2018-05-29 15:55:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6382963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wispmother/pseuds/wispmother
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clementine and MacCready are birds of a feather, with too many loose ends to match.</p>
<p>(previously posted on my tumblr, posted here with additions and edits)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Coping

Clementine and MacCready are birds of a feather - problems piling up around them, both have children out of their reach that they love with all their hearts, both lost their spouse too soon. Too soon and too violently and sometimes that leaves things unsaid; it doesn’t leave you time to memorize the way they smiled at every new sunrise or the way their hands looked as they interlaced their fingers with yours; it makes you wonder if you would recognize their voice, if you ever heard it again (Clementine got lucky on this one; she still has Nate’s last holotape to her and one night she plays it for MacCready - he wanted to know what he sounded like - and even though it drove her to tears she played it. Afterwards, between kisses, he told her that he sounded like a good man and a better father and he knew the world was poorer for his loss and he meant those words with every fiber of his being).

  
In the end they’re both cut from the same cloth because they both have holes in their hearts that stretch for miles that nothing can ever really fill because there’s too much left open. Too many loose ends but in each other they find a way to tie off and heal some of those ends. It starts when MacCready realizes that the way Clementine’s breath hitches just before she comes sounds just like Lucy, and the curve of her hip - strong and soft and a perfect fit for his hand - is identical to the shape his wife’s body and he doesn’t want to admit that he sometimes slides her face onto Clementine’s but it eases the tension in his chest and he sleeps better, sometimes. Clementine catches on when she hears him muttering apologies under his breath as he slides his body against hers. She stops him, asks what’s wrong; makes him explain when he seems too embarrassed by the whole thing. his apologies were for Lucy: for not being fast enough, strong enough to fight off the ghouls. For not being brave enough to try and trade places with her. For not being a better father, for leaving their son behind... for a million mistakes and lies he can't stop replaying in his head.

  
Clementine isn’t angry. Nor does she smile or laugh she only looks at the man sitting across from her, painted orange by dim firelight in their makeshift camp. On a level she only barely wants to admit she and MacCready are one and the same. There is so much left open, and no way to tie it off. So without words, she pulls him back into her, and that’s when they come to an agreement: with each other, they can be whoever the other needs them to be when they’re most exposed, when they’re at their rawest form. For a long time they use each other as Nate and Lucy, and there’s more crying and whispered apologies than there used to be and Clementine thinks it probably isn’t the healthiest coping mechanism but it’s working because every morning she wakes up and that miles-wide gap has closed just a little, and MacCready smiles more, laughs more and soon, when MacCready stops mid-kiss and lifts his body to look at the woman under him, his eyes filled with sentimentality that Clementine didn’t think he could muster, she can’t help but ask if she’s Lucy.  
And MacCready shakes his head, “No,” he says, lowering himself back to her. “I need Clementine.” 


End file.
